San Marco Theatre

Reopened as the San Marco Art theatre on September 25th, 1962. Ad posted.

Theatre added a second screen about five years ago. New owners took over in 2019 including a manager had been with the original owners for 10 years. It was announced just a few days ago that sadly this Theatre would be closing permanently as of January 1. The reason being streaming services and not very good product consistently from Hollywood this year. Along with declining attendance. Streaming services and bad studio deals are killing off wonderful independent theaters like the San Marko more than Covid

Here is a 2009 photo:
http://tinyurl.com/ykjdvq9

It is the only “old” movie theatre operating in Jacksonville. 70 years in 2008. As a kid in the late forties and early fifties I used to live there. I remember seeing THE OUTLAW there in the 40’s (re-release I guess). I told my parents I was seeing something else at one of the downtown theatres. We all laughed when they installed Cinemascope because the theatre seemed so small — how can such a small theatre showCINEMASCOPE? I also saw NIAGARA there with Marilyn Monroe and it changed by social life forever. A friend’s mom took us to it saying she heard the scenics of the falls were beautiful.

I think that the wonderful survival of the San Marco must have something to do with the theater’s positioning itself, circa 1960, as an ‘art theater’: for a while it called itself the San Marco Art Theater (or probably Theatre). At the time, this meant high culture, not adult material. One day a week (Wednesday, as I recall) the San Marco showed genuinely arty stuff, which was something extraordinary in the cultural desert of Jacksonville. I recall going to see a matinee of the filmed opera “Marriage of Figaro.” I was the only one in the place, not surprisingly, and the box office lady sold me a ticket at an unofficial discount (there were special high prices on the art days).

Before that, in the mid-50s, the San Marco was a typical neighborhood theater. I remember the familiar summer morning cartoon marathons for baby-boomer children.

I must’ve seen 200 movies at the San Marco during my growing-up years. The last one I remember was “Lillies of the Field,” with Sidney Poitier, though there were others because I lived in Jax for another four years after that movie was released.

When I went back to Southside Jacksonville for the last time (the last family funeral) in 2003, it was nice to sit outside the nearly Starbucks and look at the San Marco marquee. The theater is just about my only distinctive memory of the place where I grew up; it was, and happily, still is, something extraordinary in a city that hardly had any identity at all before it snagged an NFL team to give people there something to pretend to talk about.

Night photo:
View link

The area across the Main St.Bridge was once a vibrant seperate city-South Jacksonville.There were a lot of streets and hundreds of bldgs that are just GONE.Into the 60’s the area was commonly called S.Jax.Now,the San Marco.It will always have the softest of spots in my heart.It was the site of my first “date”,walked with little Janie Jenkins from her parents nearby mansion to the movies.I believe we saw the Strategic Air Command w/Jimmy Stewart.I am so thrilled with the overall condition of the San Marco area.It is almost as nice as it was in 1959.Nearby is the wonderful legit theater with a long history also.